Abstract:

Humans are social animals living in groups and tending to organize themselves hierarchically. This social stratification influences individuals’ social interactions, as well as their cognitive processes such as learning. Because learning is essential during infancy, in this dissertation we aim to explore infants’ representation of social hierarchies and their influence on learning. A first set of studies showed that infants understand and can link from a third-party perspective two types of social hierarchies: those regulating conflicts (dominant-subordinate relationships) and those regulating collective actions (leader-follower relationships). A final study showed that infants are biased to learn from high-rank (dominant) individuals. We propose that infants' learning is influenced by high-rank agents because they are represented as leaders. We discuss the possible reasons behind human tendency to imitate high-rank agents (leaders) and we formulate a proposal of future studies addressing infants' representation of leadership.